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Executive to stub out art of smoking

THE Scottish executive is to rewrite history by banning smoking in films, television programmes and stage plays.

The once ubiquitous sight of film stars sharing a cigarette will be a thing of the past in Scotland as a result of the ban on smoking in public places. Even actors in period and historical dramas, depicting times when smoking was almost universal, will be banned from lighting up.

The smoking bill, published earlier this month, and to be implemented in 2006, will make it an offence to smoke in enclosed, public and work spaces. The ban will apply to smoking on stages, television studios and on film sets.

Playwrights and theatre directors have raised concerns that productions in which “in character” smoking is an integral part of the script, will be compromised. They include The Slab Boys, John Byrne’s seminal comedy about workers in a Scottish carpet dye factory, in which